Library releases classified JFK doodles

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Doodles and notes released by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library provide researchers and members of the public with a look into the personal side of the former president.

Previously classified notes and doodles by former US President
John F Kennedy may not offer up any major revelations, but the
documents promise to add an intriguing footnote to the assassinated
president's archives.

For example, on September 25, 1963, as President Kennedy
hopscotched across the west aboard Air Force One before landing in
Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he took a fresh piece of stationery and
scribbled a note just below the presidential seal.

It read, "Report action in Texas" or "Request action in
Texas".

Below that, he wrote "John Connolly," then the Texas
governor.

Fierce infighting among Texas Democrats would spur the president
to visit that state two months later. He was shot in Dallas on
November 22 during that trip.

The note is one of dozens of pages of doodles and writings that
will be available for public viewing at the John F Kennedy
Library and Museum today, the day after the 41th anniversary of
Kennedy's assassination.

It's not clear what Kennedy referred to in the Air Force One
note. Still, Maura Porter, head of the library's Declassification
Unit, recalled how startled she was to discover it among Kennedy
documents still awaiting review.

"That was one of the first (items) that I saw, and it was just
striking," she said.

"I gave a little gasp. You had John Connolly and Texas on the
same doodle and then he was assassinated a few months later."

Some of the 135 pages that will be added to an existing archive
of JFK doodles are grim reflections of the day's top policy issues,
while others are whimsical drawings or indecipherable scrawls with
no hint to their meaning.

Though there are no blockbuster revelations to be found in the
documents, Porter said they showed a bit of Kennedy that won't be
seen in the polished presidential documents or official archives of
the Kennedy White House.

"I don't think there's any smoking gun here," she said.

"I don't think people are going to gain knowledge that they
didn't have before, but it just adds to this whole picture of him
as a man and as a president."

Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary when he was senator and
president, was a compulsive JFK chronicler.

When he left a meeting, he would leave his papers behind and
Lincoln would collect them, labelling them "KS" during his senate
years and "KP" when he was president and numbering them
sequentially.

There are whimsical, inscrutable notes, such as the sailboat
doodles he sketched on a piece of yellow legal paper on March 12,
1963, a day when he had a legislative breakfast early in the
morning, and few other official obligations.

"When you see the sailboats, you realise, 'wow, he really did
love sailing'," she said.

"(You) wouldn't doodle something like that unless it was
something that was obviously on your mind when you were sitting in
that meeting."